Banana-Blueberry Buttermilk Bread | Country Cooking Recipes

Banana-Blueberry Buttermilk Bread



3/4 cup nonfat or low-fat buttermilk 
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar 
1/4 cup canola oil 
2 large eggs 
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 3 medium) 
1 1/4 cups whole-wheat pastry flour 
1 cup all-purpose flour 
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
1/2 teaspoon baking soda 
1/2 teaspoon salt 
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg 
1 1/4 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen 



Preheat oven to 375°F. Coat a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan with cooking spray.


 Whisk buttermilk, brown sugar, oil and eggs in a large bowl. Stir in mashed bananas.
 Whisk whole-wheat pastry flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, salt and nutmeg in a medium bowl.
 Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Fold in blueberries. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan.
 Bake until the top is golden brown and a wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean, 50 to 60 minutes. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack. Let cool for about 2 hours before slicing.


The slight acidity of buttermilk tenderizes and moistens baked goods while allowing you to cut way back on butter or oils. Here, it also lends a slight tanginess to the winning combination of bananas and blueberries. 

6 Common Foods Can Weaken Bones Drastically | Country Cooking Recipes

What you eat plays a big role in whether you're getting the nutrients you need to build strong bones. What might surprise you, though, is that your diet can also play a role in sapping bone strength. Some foods actually leach the minerals right out of the bone, or they block the bone's ability to regrow. Here, the six biggest bone-sappers:

1. Salt

Salt saps calcium from the bones, weakening them over time. For every 2,300 milligrams of sodium you take in, you lose about 40 milligrams of calcium, dietitians say. One study compared postmenopausal women who ate a high-salt diet with those who didn't, and the ones who ate a lot of salt lost more bone minerals. Our American diet is unusually salt-heavy; most of us ingest double the 2,300 milligrams of salt we should get in a day, according to the 2005 federal dietary guidelines.

What to do: The quickest, most efficient way to is to avoid processed foods. Research shows that most Americans get 75 percent of their sodium not from table salt but from processed food. Key foods to avoid include processed and deli meats, frozen meals, canned soup, pizza, fast food such as burgers and fries, and canned vegetables.

2. Soft drinks

Soft drinks pose a double-whammy danger to bones. The fizziness in carbonated drinks often comes from phosphoric acid, which ups the rate at which calcium is excreted in the urine. Meanwhile, of course, soft drinks fill you up and satisfy your thirst without providing any of the nutrients you might get from milk or juice.

What to do: When you're tempted to reach for a cola, instead try milk, calcium- and vitamin D-fortified orange juice, or a fruit smoothie made with yogurt. Or just drink water when you're thirsty, and eat a diet high in bone-building nutrients.

3. Caffeine

The numbers for caffeine aren't as bad as for salt, but caffeine's action is similar, leaching calcium from bones. For every 100 milligrams of caffeine (the amount in a small to medium-sized cup of coffee), you lose 6 milligrams of calcium. That's not a lot, but it can become a problem if you tend to substitute caffeine-containing drinks like iced tea and coffee for beverages that are healthy for bones, like milk and fortified juice.

What to do: Limit yourself to one or two cups of coffee in the morning, then switch to other drinks that don't have caffeine's bone-sapping action. Adding milk to your coffee helps to offset the problem, of course.

4. Vitamin A

In the case of vitamin A, recent research is proving that you really can get too much of a good thing. Found in eggs, full-fat dairy, liver, and vitamin-fortified foods, vitamin A is important for vision and the immune system. But the American diet is naturally high in vitamin A, and most multivitamins also contain vitamin A. So it's possible to get much more than the recommended allotment of 5,000 IUs (international units) a day -- which many experts think is too high anyway.

Postmenopausal women, in particular, seem to be susceptible to vitamin A overload. Studies show that women whose intake was higher than 5,000 IUs had more than double the fracture rate of women whose intake was less than 1,600 IUs a day.

What to do: Switch to low-fat or nonfat dairy products only, and eat egg whites rather than whole eggs (all the vitamin A is in the yolk). Also check your multivitamin, and if it's high in vitamin A, switch to one that isn't.

5. Alcohol

Think of alcohol as a calcium-blocker; it prevents the bone-building minerals you eat from being absorbed. And heavy drinking disrupts the bone remodeling process by preventing osteoblasts, the bone- building cells, from doing their job. So not only do bones become weaker, but when you do suffer a fracture, alcohol can interfere with healing.

What to do: Limit your drinking to one drink a day, whether that's wine, beer, or hard alcohol.

6. Hydrogenated oils

Recent studies have found that the process of hydrogenation, which turns liquid vegetable oil into the solid oils used in commercial baking, destroys the vitamin K naturally found in the oils. Vitamin K is essential for strong bones, and vegetable oils such as canola and olive oil are the second-best dietary source of this key nutrient, after green leafy vegetables. However, the amounts of vitamin K we're talking about are tiny here -- one tablespoon of canola oil has 20 micrograms of K, and one tablespoon of olive oil has 6 micrograms, as compared with 120 micrograms in a serving of spinach.

What to do: If you're eating your greens, you don't need to worry about this too much. If you're a big lover of baked goods like muffins and cookies, bake at home using canola oil when possible, and read labels to avoid hydrogenated oils.

Baked Chicken Tenders | Country Cooking Recipes

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These tasty nuggets are crispy but low in fat because they are baked and not fried! Made with all white meat (as opposed to the usual fillers), they make a healthy fast-food alternative. Serve with ketchup, barbecue sauce or a low-fat ranch dressing mixed with plain yogurt.

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 egg white
1/4 cup low-fat buttermilk
1 cup cornflakes, crushed

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Coat a baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray. Prepare three bowls: one with flour and seasonings, one with egg white and buttermilk stirred together, and one with crushed cornflakes. Cut chicken breasts into 1- to 1 1/2-inch pieces. Place chicken pieces into bowl and roll in flour mixture. Then, piece by piece, shake off excess flour, dip the chicken into the milk mixture, then coat the pieces with cornflakes. Place chicken on baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes until golden, turning them halfway through.